Social games publisher Playfish was one of the pioneers of Facebook gaming, before being acquired by Electronic Arts in November 2009 in a deal worth up to $400m after earnouts. Now one of its co-founders has launched a new startup, Mindshapes, making apps for toddlers.

The company's first app is live on Apple's App Store today: Jellytoons Toddler Skills: Bobo's Birthday Challenge. It's a collection of six mini-games designed to help develop critical thinking and fine motor skills, including shape and colour matching, counting and simple logic puzzles.

Parents can track their child's progress through colourful charts, and there are virtual stickers to unlock as a reward for using the app. It's currently available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and costs 59p.

The Mindshapes chief executive, Shukri Shammas, was one of Playfish's co-founders, and has built a team including talent from that company, as well as from Glu Mobile – the mobile games publisher that acquired Shammas' mobile games developer Macrospace in 2004.

The Jellytoons characters

The Mindshapes team also includes hires from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, as well as animation studios, educational organisations and advertising companies.

"We believe that parents are being under-served by the current offerings for toddlers on the App Store," the Mindshapes director of business development, Ramez Mikdashi, tells Apps Blog. "While there are dozens of available titles, none of them combine compelling characters, engaging educational content and high-quality production like Jellytoons."

Mikdashi says Mindshapes has a range of apps planned for the coming months, and is focusing on iOS for now, rather than look to roll them out immediately to other mobile platforms such as Android, or Facebook and the wider web.

"Given the age group that we are serving, we decided that iOS would provide a more user-friendly interface than the Web," says Mikdashi. "As for Android, we're keeping an eye on that market and will port our apps when the time is right."

What's interesting about Mindshapes is its decision to focus on its own IP – the Jellytoons characters – against competition from brands like Dr Seuss, Dora the Explorer and In the Night Garden, although those apps are more focused on entertainment than education and development skills.

Mindshapes' direct rivals are more likely to be North American own-IP developers such as Duck Duck Moose, Zinc Roe Games, Budge Studios, Piccolo Apps, WindUp Rocket and Little Brain (among others), along with UK studio Apps In My Pocket, currently riding high in the UK App Store chart with its abc PocketPhonics application.